Halloween Recipe: Two-Bite Nutella Chocolate Cookies

Here's a quick little Halloween treat for you! Nothing spooky about these two-bite cookies, just a touch of rich Nutella to indulge your sweet tooth and a drizzle of icing to dress them up in full Halloween style. Guaranteed to appease all the ghosts, goblins, and witches who stop by for a treat.

I love the crinkled, craggy tops on these cookies. You know a cookie is going to be good with a top like that. These are just a touch crispy on the edges, but soft, chewy, and richly chocolatey when you bite into them.

I also found that if you bake them an extra minute or two, the cookies become more crunchy and wafer-like. I like both the chewy and the crunchy versions so much that I decided to give instructions for both.

I also can't help but imagine this as a Christmas cookie, made with a drop of peppermint extract in the dough and drizzled with red and green frosting. I debated doing just that and saving this cookie for another month or two, but in the end, I couldn't keep it to myself that long.

These cookies hit all the spots that a good cookie should: a little crunch, a little chew, and sweet enough to make you smile. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or silpat.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Make sure there are no lumps. (Sift through a strainer if necessary to break up the cocoa.)

In a standing mixer or with handheld mixer, beat together the softened butter and Nutella until creamy. Beat in the granulated sugar and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg, water, and vanilla extract. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beater as needed during these additions.

With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture. Mix just until the dough starts to come together and the flour is nearly incorporated. Fold the batter a few times with a spatula to work in the last of the flour.

Pinch off bits of dough and roll between your hands to make balls with a roughly 1-inch diameter. Arrange them on the baking sheet a few inches apart. Bake for 8 minutes for softer fudgy cookies or 10 minutes for crispy wafer cookies. Allow to cool for 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to a cooling rack. Repeat with baking the remaining dough.

Let the cookies cool completely before drizzling with icing. When ready to ice, whisk together the powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk in a small bowl. Transfer half of the icing to a ziplock bag and seal closed. To the remaining icing, whisk in the yellow and red food coloring until it is uniformly orange. Add more food coloring if you'd like more intensity. Transfer the orange icing into a second ziplock bag.

Arrange the cookies as closely together as possible on the cooling rack. Snip a tiny corner from the bag of white icing and drizzle in long diagonal lines across all the cookies. When finished, snip a corner from the bag of orange icing and repeat drizzling. Let the cookies sit for about 20 minutes for the icing to dry before serving or storing.